Dead By Dawn Read Online Free Page B

night,” he said.
     
    “Good. It’s settled then.” She leaned over and kissed him. “Thanks for under standing.”
     
    “Just don’t get yourself into any trouble,” he said and hugged her.
     

Chapter 6
     
    Lindsay met Calhoun for lunch at the Paso Robles Inn, where she booked a room for the night. He brought the file with him. She looked at the manila folder and remarked, “That’s awfully thin.”
     
    “Old cases are tough. Things get lost. I can’t guarantee everything is here. There is an evidence box from the trial that goes with that folder,” Dixon said.
     
    “What do you remember about this?”
     
    “Not a lot. I was just a kid. What I know is probably mostly rumor. Hippies broke into the farmhouse in the middle of the night. They shot the husband and wife. They took two little girls. One was found in an irrigation ditch in the San Joaquin Valley. The other one was never found. The baby was in the crib at the scene,” Dixon answered.
     
    “Do you want to go out to the crime scene with me?” Lindsay asked.
     
    “That sounds good. Let’s finish lunch and head out there,” he said.
     
    The drive to Shandon was about twenty minutes from Paso Robles. Shandon was known mostly for the James Dean memorial. James Dean had crashed his Porsche out on Highway 46. The two lane highway passed farmland and ranches. The ranches that used to be alfalfa were now grapes. Paso Robles had become the heart of wine country on the central coast. They turned down the road that led into the town of Shandon. “Do you remember going to all those picnics at the city park here?” Dixon asked.
     
    “Are you kidding? Every summer, my grandmother would drag us out here for the church picnic. I remember they had a great pool in the park,” Lindsay answered.
     
    Calhoun slowed the car and pulled over to the shoulder of the road. “This is where it happened.” He pointed down a dirt road to a run down ranch house.
     
    “Does anyone live there?” she asked.
     
    “It doesn’t look like it. Let’s go down the driveway and see if anyone comes out.”
     
    They drove down the quarter mile stretch of dirt road. The fields on either side of the road were now weeds. As they got closer to the home, Lindsay could see the paint was peeling on the eaves and the steps on the front porch looked rotted. “When was the last time anyone lived here?” she asked.
     
    “I don’t know. I never really noticed the place before today,” Dixon said.
     
    Lindsay wrote on the pad of paper. “I’ll need to see who owns this place.”
     
    They got out of the car and carefully walked up the rotten steps, trying not to fall through the brittle wood. Dixon knocked on the door. No one answered. He tried the knob. It was locked. Lindsay peeked through the large plate glass window in the front of the home. It was dirty, but she could see inside. “No furniture,” she observed.
     
    They walked around the side of the house and into the overgrown back yard. The fence in the backyard was wooden and falling apart. “There’s a barn.” She pointed further out toward the fields.
     
    They started back to the barn. The door was unlocked. It creaked when Dixon opened it. Inside they saw stacks of hay and an old John Deere tractor. “The tractor looks like an antique,” he said. Next to the bales of hay, there were empty beer bottles lying around. “It looks like a place the kids use to party.”
     
    “What did they used to grow here?” Lindsay asked.
     
    “I don’t know. The rumor was that the Davenports’ graduated from Cal Poly and started their own grape-farming operation,” Dixon said.
     
    “I didn’t know that was trendy back then,” Lindsay said.
     
    “Rumor was they grew pot, too.”
     
    Lindsay laughed. “Oh, that kind of farming. Any truth to that rumor?”
     
    “I don’t know,” Dixon shrugged.
     
    “Let’s get out of here. This barn is creeping me out.”
     
    “Oh, what happened to Miss Big Time,